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The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
The Pink Panther Strikes Again is the fifth film in The Pink Panther series and picks up where The Return of the Pink Panther leaves off. Released in 1976, Strikes Again is the third entry to include the words "Pink Panther" in its title, despite the fact the story does not involve the Pink Panther diamond. Unused footage from the film was later included in Trail of the Pink Panther. At a psychiatric hospital, former Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) is largely recovered from his obsession to kill the new Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers) and is about to be released when Clouseau, arriving to speak on Dreyfus' behalf, drives Dreyfus insane again. Dreyfus promptly escapes from the asylum and once again tries to kill Clouseau by planting a bomb while the Inspector (by periodic arrangement) duels with his manservant Cato (Burt Kwouk). The bomb destroys Clouseau's apartment and injures Cato, but Clouseau himself is unharmed, being lifted from the room by an inflatable disguise. Determining a more elabourate plan is needed, Dreyfus enlists an army of criminals to his cause and kidnaps nuclear physicist Professor Hugo Fassbender (Richard Vernon) and the Professor's daughter Margo (Briony McRoberts), forcing the professor to build a "doomsday weapon" in return for his daughter's freedom. Clouseau travels to England to investigate Fassbender's disappearance, where he wrecks their family home and ineptly interrogates Jarvis (Michael Robbins), Fassbender's cross-dressing butler. Although Jarvis is killed by the kidnappers, to whom he had become a dangerous witness, Clouseau discovers a clue that leads him to theOktoberfest in Germany. Meanwhile, Dreyfus, using Fassbender's invention, dissolves the United Nations headquarters in New York City and blackmails the leaders of the world, including the President of the United States (a thinly-veiled impersonation of Gerald Ford, advised by a poorly-camouflaged Henry Kissinger), into assassinating Clouseau. However, many of the nations instruct their assassins to kill the other assassins to gain Dreyfus's favor and possibly the Doomsday Machine. As a result of their orders and Clouseau's habitual clumsiness, the assassins all end up killing each other until only the operatives of Egypt and Russia remain. The Egyptian assassin (an uncredited cameo by Omar Sharif) shoots one of Dreyfus' henchmen, mistaking him for Clouseau, but is seduced by the Russian operative Olga Bariosova (Lesley-Anne Down), who makes the same mistake. When the real Clouseau arrives, he is perplexed by Olga's affections but learns from her Dreyfus's location at a castle in Bavaria. Dreyfus is elated at Clouseau's apparent demise, but suffers toothache; Clouseau, his entry frustrated by the castle's drawbridge, infiltrates Dreyfus's castle disguised as a dentist, intoxicates Dreyfus (and himself) with nitrous oxide and pulls one of Dreyfus's healthy teeth instead. Realising the deception, Dreyfus orders Clouseau killed, who again avoids Dreyfus' henchmen with his usual ineptitude. Enraged, Dreyfus prepares to dissolve England, but Clouseau unwittingly foils him by being catapulted onto Dreyfus's doomsday machine; the machine promptly malfunctions and begins disintegrating the castle walls. As the remaining henchmen, Fassbender and his daughter, and eventually Clouseau himself escape the dissolving castle, Dreyfus plays "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" on the castle's pipe organ, while himself disintegrating, until he and the castle vanish. Returning to Paris, Clouseau is finally reunited with Olga. However, their tryst is interrupted first by Clouseau's apparent inability to remove his clothes without a struggle, and then by Cato, whereupon all three are hurled by the reclining bed into the Seine. Immediately thereafter, a cartoon image of Clouseau begins swimming, unaware that a gigantic version of the Pink Panther character is waiting below him (a reference to the film Jaws, made obvious by the thematic music as the movie ends). Owing to Peter Sellers's heart condition, whenever possible he would have his stunt double Joe Dunne stand in for him. Because of the often physical nature of the comedy, this would occur quite frequently. Julie Andrews provided the singing voice for the female-impersonator "Ainsley Jarvis".2 The scene in the night club when Jarvis sings are in many ways similar to scenes in Edwards's later film Victor Victoria (1982), in which Andrews plays a woman pretending to be a man who is a female impersonator. Graham Stark, longtime friend of Sellers, once again makes an appearance in the series, albeit in a small cameo role as the owner of a small German motel. Since his role as Hercule LaJoy in A Shot in the Dark, he has since appeared in small roles in every Pink Panther sequel except Inspector Clouseau, in which Sellers did not play Clouseau. Omar Sharif appears, uncredited, as the Egyptian assassin. Tom Jones sang the Oscar-nominated song "Come To Me". The role of Olga Bariosova was originally played by Maud Adams who was replaced after filming a few scenes. Blake Edwards then intended to cast Nicola Pagettafter seeing her in Upstairs, Downstairs but instead ended up casting Pagett's fellow TV star Lesley-Anne Down in the role. Blake Edwards made a cameo appearance in the background of the night club scene. The Pink Panther Strikes Again was rushed into production owing to the success of The Return of the Pink Panther.3 Blake Edwards had used one of two scripts that he and Frank Waldman had written for a proposed "Pink Panther" TV series as the basis for that film, and he used the other as the starting point for Strikes Again. As a result, it is the only Pink Panther movie which has a storyline that explicitly follows on from the previous film. The film was in production from December 1975 to September 1976, with filming taking place from February to June 1976.4 The relationship between Sellers and Blake Edwards, never very good, had seriously deteriorated by the time Strikes Again was filmed. Sellers was physically in bad shape, and Edwards says of the actor's mental state: "If you went to an asylum and you described the first inmate you saw, that's what Peter had become. He was certifiable."3 The original cut of the film ran for 124 minutes, but it was trimmed down to 103 minutes for theatrical release. Some of the footage was later used in Trail of the Pink Panther. Strikes Again was marketed with the tagline Why are the world's chief assassins after Inspector Clouseau? Why not? Everybody else is. Like its predecessor and subsequent sequel, the film was considered a box office success. During the film's title sequence, there are references to television's Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the films Batman, King Kong, The Sound of Music (which starred Blake Edwards's wife, Julie Andrews), Dracula AD 1972, Singin' in the Rain, Steamboat Bill Jr., and Sweet Charity, putting the Pink Panther character and the animated persona of Inspector Clouseau into recognizable events from said movies. There is also a reference to Jaws in the end-credits sequence. The scene in which Clouseau impersonates a dentist and the use of laughing gas and pulling the wrong tooth are clearly inspired by Bob Hope in The Paleface (1948).5 Richard Williams (later of Roger Rabbit fame) supervised the animation of the opening and closing sequences for the second and final time; original animatorsDePatie-Freleng Enterprises would return on the next film, but with decidedly Williamesque influences. Sellers was never happy with the final version of the film and publicly criticized Blake Edwards for mis-using his talents. The strain in their relationships is noted in the next Pink Panther movie's opening credits ("Revenge Of The Pink Panther") listing it as a "Sellers-Edwards" production. Despite being apparently killed off (after committing major crimes), Inspector Dreyfus returned in Revenge of the Pink Panther, once again a policeman. René Goscinny, a French comic book and movie writer (most known for the Asterix series), at one point was trying to sue Blake Edwards for plagiarism. The movie had strong similarities to Goscinny's script titled "Le Maître du Monde" (The Master of the World). Goscinny, who was a big Pink Panther fan, in fact sent the script to Peter Sellers in 1975 asking if he was interested in playing the main part, but got no response. The lawsuit was filed, but because of Goscinny's death in 1977 it was cancelled.